


Feathers of Blue

by bluetoast



Series: Birds of a Feather [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Child Abuse, Deaf Character, Deaf Dean Winchester, F/M, Gen, John Winchester's Bad Parenting, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-16 00:35:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1325152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluetoast/pseuds/bluetoast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holidays are strange things - some are good, some are bad. Important dates that matter to some and are unimportant to others. On Valentine's Day night in 1979, when the air was alive with noise, John Winchester was little less worried of what happened than he was of his three week old son falling right back to sleep after the initial explosion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feathers of Blue

**Author's Note:**

> In the Birds of a Feather verse, any time a character speaks using italics, they are using American Sign Language.

John Winchester would later call it the First Fire. The city of Lawrence, Kansas would put it in their history books as the Valentine's Day Fire. He would later wonder if the string of fires that struck twelve colleges and universities in 1979 as mere coincidence or something more. In total, the twelve fires would result in two deaths, six severe injuries and thirty-six minor injuries. John would also regard that as not that bad, considering six of the twelve would raze buildings to the ground. Perhaps that was a horrible thing to even think – but a tour in Vietnam had taught him to accept things in retrospect. 

It began with an explosion. The whole house shook, rattling the windows in the dead of the night. John sat bolt upright in bed, his heart hammering and the fear that he was back in the jungles of Vietnam. A split second later, Dean, all of three weeks old, started screaming in the bassinet next to the bed. Mary flipped on a light, her face slightly ashen as she got out of bed and picked Dean up. “What was that?”

John shook his head, his heart slowly returning to a normal beat. “It didn't sound good, whatever it was.” He got out of bed and looked out the window, frowning. “I think it was something on the campus.” 

“Ssh...” Mary came over to stand next to him, soothing Dean, who had gone from full fledged screaming to whimpering. “It's okay, we're safe.” 

He wrapped his arm around his wife's shoulder and smoothed down the back of Dean's head. “It'll be okay, sport. It's over now.” 

The cold night was suddenly rent in two again, this time with a cacophony of sirens and horns. Far in the distance, on the other side of the massive field that come the spring would be full of soybeans, they could see the first of the emergency vehicles race down the road towards the university. 

“I hope everyone's all right and it's not a dorm that's on fire.” Mary shook her head and moved a little closer to him. “What could have happened?”

“I'm guessing it was a furnace or a boiler of some kind. Good thing the oil storage tanks are on the other side of town.” He shuddered. “I don't think we want to know what that would sound like.” He winced as more sirens filled the air. “If those ever went, they'd hear it all the way in Topeka.”

“No kidding.” She let out a sigh. “I don't think any of us will be getting back to sleep soon, not with this going on.” She looked up as the unmistakable sound of a helicopter roared over the house. “If that came from Leavenworth, that was fast.”

“They might have been out on an exercise and got orders.” John frowned. “I do hope all those kids on campus are...” He stopped talking as the sounds of more sirens approached, making the noise almost painful. “Is Dean asleep?”

“What?” Mary shifted her arms, a look of surprise on her face. “He is.” She cringed as another helicopter raced over the house. 

John's whole range of focus shifted. The noise, the unknown explosion – all of it faded away as the two of them stared down at an utterly content Dean, his breathing slow and even, completely unaffected from the chaos of the night. A spark of fear lit in his heart – something he thought long buried. The memory of being in Gran's basement while the wind roared and the tornado sirens wailed out their warning. And Gran sitting calm in the middle of it, sheltering his cousin in her arms, only flinching when something shook the house. The rest – to her – had been silent. 

_Not Dean. No. He can't be deaf, he can't!_ John always thought Gran went deaf. Went deaf like his stepfather's father – the way he thought he might go if he spent his time around heavy machinery and too loud music. _Maybe Dean was just a super heavy sleeper... but..._

“John?” Mary's voice cut into his thoughts. “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine.” He kissed her cheek and brushed Dean's. “I'd say we're pretty lucky he's sleeping. Odds are, the rest of the kids in this neighborhood are crying and screaming right now.”

She let out a nervous giggle. “True.” Mary took the boy back to his bassinet and laid him down in it. “He'll wake up when he's hungry, like he always does.” 

“Yeah.” He came over and kissed her cheek, barely registering the third helicopter that went over the house. “Funny, I don't remember moving next to the airport.” More sirens, distant and far off, echoed in the night, coming closer to the town. 

“Maybe he'll be good and sleep through his shots next time we go to the doctor.” She got back into bed. “Though somehow I don't think that's likely.” 

“How many is he supposed to get?” He returned to bed as well, the nagging worry of Dean being deaf still at the edges of his mind. He'd never told Mary about his Gran.

“I think just one or two – it's when he's two months old they give him several.” Mary turned out the light and then she snuggled up against him. “Maybe we can get another hour of sleep before he wants to eat.”

John yawned, doing his best to block out the sound of sirens. “Sounds good.” He closed his eyes, trying to calm his fears. There was nothing wrong with being deaf – and Dean was a newborn who needed lots of sleep so of course he drifted back off. Still... he'd call his mom in the morning and ask her about Gran. As long as his stepfather wasn't there. Joel hated for him and his mother to talk at all -especially about family members. John had been the excess baggage in their marriage and well, he'd never approved of Gran. Joel didn't approve of a lot of things.

Like it was John's fault that Henry Winchester vanished one night when he was nine years old.


End file.
